Euro zone business activity declined far more than thought in August with the slide in Germany particularly fast, while some inflationary pressures returned, surveys showed.

Britain's economy looks on course to shrink during the current quarter and risks falling into a recession, as a survey on Wednesday showed a slump in factory output and broader weakness in the face of higher interest rates.

Japan may be seeing early signs of sticky inflation with several measures of broad price trends hitting record highs in July, data showed, heightening the case for a retreat from decades of ultra-loose monetary policy.

The coronavirus pandemic and rise in cost of living have pushed close to 70 million more people in developing Asia into extreme poverty as of last year, the Asian Development Bank said, eroding efforts to combat deprivation.

U.S. business activity approached the stagnation point in August, with growth at its weakest since February as demand for new business in the vast service sector contracted.

The red-hot U.S. job market was not quite as blistering as originally reported in the year through March, after the Labor Department on Wednesday lowered its estimate of total payroll employment that month by 306,000 and of private employment by even more.